Overheard from the so-called patriarch of a family seated at the table next to us at IHOP this evening, his response to the seemingly benign question, “Can I bring everyone another round of drinks?”

“Sure. Pro’ly take 8 hours to get it here. This is fuck’n ridic’lous! I mean, come on.”

What I assume Mr. Manners was miffed about was the fact that our food arrived to us before theirs did and we were seated after they were. We were a party of 4 who all had pancakes of some variety while they were a party of five with a much more diverse order. We even had different waitresses, so it’s not like our service had somehow taken precedence over theirs.

Mr. M – as I’ve dubbed him – was accompanied by his doting wife who was equally agitated, his two kids – one a teenager and the other in elementary school and what was either his Mama or an animal from his farm that had contracted mange. It was hard to tell with the fleeting glimpses I was getting. Think Deliverance but then dirty her up a bit and don’t brush her hair for a full lunar cycle.

Thanks to the M family for furthering my theory that the Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon split was not the last time the humanoid tree branched out a bit! Wow.

In other news, while I wouldn’t recommend it for very small children, Coraline was a work of art! The visuals are unbelievably deep and rich and the story has a great darkness to it that’s very engrossing, but it also hit home on levels where my kids could fully appreciate the story itself with no regard for the wizardry that brought it to the screen. CGI these days regularly achieves a level of reality that makes you forget you’re watching animation. I’m not sure I ever thought that could happen with stop-motion, but it did during a few scenes.